At 23, I decided I wanted to work with offenders. I’d always been fascinated by people who did bad things, maybe because I was a little bad myself. I’m the second youngest in a gigantic family, so there’s a touch of catholic guilt talking, but no, I was naughty as a child and you … | Continue reading
If – like me – you love a comedy murder mystery or thriller, but have been judged by someone for it, I’m here to tell you that it’s ok because of science. That’s right, there is actually science behind your enjoyment of silly murders. One of the things that we humans find funny i … | Continue reading
“Sex Was Everywhere” Once upon a time there was no sex, but sex was everywhere: in Lisa’s sixth-grade locker with her breath mints and roll-on deodorant; in Dr. Perlman’s walk—slow and tight-calved; in Mr. Robinson’s guitar, playing Cat Steven’s “Wild World” each afternoon before … | Continue reading
Whether authors will admit it or not, some of us use personal experiences as inspiration for our writing. In the case of my latest psychological thriller The Alone Time, I drew inspiration from a plane crash that I survived when I was a child. The influence of my experience can b … | Continue reading
After the publication of Nedra Tyre’s first book, a collection of dramatic monologues based upon her career as a social services caseworker entitled Red Wine First, the native Georgian author joined a writing group in Atlanta, one of whose members, Atlanta Constitution columnist … | Continue reading
The notion of “Identity” can be regarded in multiple ways: Identity (noun): the condition or fact of being a specific person or thing; the ways that people’s self-concepts are based on their membership in social groups; the characteristics and qualities of a person, considered co … | Continue reading
The Harlem Detectives arrived like a thunderbolt. Like a meteor screaming across the sky. I had seen detectives before, but nothing compared to this. Or so I felt when I was introduced to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. They make their appearance at the start of chapter … | Continue reading
I love feminism, and I love serial killer novel, but for many years I could never find enough novels featuring feminist female killers. (Aside from Sweetpea by CJ Skuse, the evergreen classic series of this genre.) So I decided to write one. My novel Bad Men is the story of heire … | Continue reading
Some time back, I saw a meme on social media about being a “good-enough” friend to help someone hide a dead body. It got me thinking: who would I help? My oldest childhood friends sprung to mind. If they killed someone and couldn’t—who knows why?—call the cops, there’d have to be … | Continue reading
I should really have titled this column “The Best International Crime Fiction of May Plus One From April and One From Last Year”: mistakes were made in my reading preparations, and when you read two-thirds of a book that came out last year thinking it was out this month, you feel … | Continue reading
In the immortal words of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “And now for something completely different…” For Abir Mukherjee – the author of the award-winning, immensely popular procedural series that takes place in post-World War One Calcutta featuring Captain Sam Wyndham, a former d … | Continue reading
One autumn afternoon in the German town of Zwickau, a woman splashed ten liters of gasoline around her apartment, then set it on fire. She had been dreading this day for years, hoping it wouldn’t come to this. But on November 4, 2011, it did, and she needed to act quickly to save … | Continue reading
Authors tend to be solitary creatures, so the idea of collaborating with one another is a rather odd event. That said, when Clive Cussler called me up some years back and asked if I’d like to work on his Oregon Files series of adventure novels, I said yes even before we discussed … | Continue reading
To step into a campus novel, like stepping onto a college campus, is to enter a miniature world. It’s a place with a particular geography, made of dorm rooms and classrooms, student centers and dining halls. Time is both fixed and in motion: for students, it’s always moving towar … | Continue reading
On Cumberland Island, Georgia, between the twisted oaks of the maritime forest and the broad, white dunes of the ocean-facing coast, I met a feral horse. He—a stallion straight from the cover of Black Beauty, if a little scragglier—had positioned himself on the narrow causeway th … | Continue reading
The 8:04 is coming down the tracks. Board at your own risk. This is the warning on the cover reveal for my new thriller The Man on the Train. Ever since the original damsel in distress was tied to the railroad tracks and early audiences purportedly fled in terror at the sight of … | Continue reading
Los Angeles is the quintessential city of mystery, and I firmly believe that my decision to live here ultimately led me to write crime fiction. But that journey took decades. I wasn’t one of the starry-eyed optimists who thought of LA as the promised land. When I moved from New Y … | Continue reading
Genre fiction is my jam, so I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes my favorite books tick. Growing up, I read a lot of macho thrillers: spies and submarines, combatants and operatives. These battles were mostly fought by well-trained experts. It’s fun to learn to pilot a … | Continue reading
Each month, I attempt to perform the Herculean endeavor of rounding up all the best psychological thrillers coming out, and each month, I must admit to myself the true impossibility of the task in the face of so many good titles. May, however, has been particularly challenging, i … | Continue reading
A look at the week’s best new releases in crime fiction, nonfiction, mystery, and thrillers. * Abir Mukherjee, Hunted (Mulholland) “A pretty much flawless thriller, Hunted works on every level imaginable. Terrific characters are subtly and mercilessly pushed along by a plot as pr … | Continue reading
An honorable serial killer. A hacker turned vigilante. A gentleman thief. Mysteries and thrillers are full of morally ambiguous antiheroes who challenge us to confront truths about human nature and undermine strict definitions of good and evil. From Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov to S. … | Continue reading
I don’t usually include personal anecdotes in film reviews, lest they detract from the critical discussion at hand, but I’d just like to open this review by saying that I brought my 87-year-old Croatian grandmother with me to my advance screening of The Fall Guy in IMAX, and afte … | Continue reading
From the time gold was discovered here in 1871, Alaska has been a magnet for a certain type of risk-taker. Daredevil fortune seekers came, seduced by the area’s seemingly infinite riches – miners, traders, trappers, and crab fishermen all answering Alaska’s siren song. Throughout … | Continue reading
One of the most creative avenues for genre exploration today is found in young adult fiction. The following new and upcoming releases are distinguished by nimble use of tropes, deep love of references, intricate plotting, and a passion for justice. They are also, and I cannot emp … | Continue reading
Not coincidentally, I quit my great love, horror movies, right around the time I became a mom. Perhaps it’s because new terrors haunted me: SIDS and school shootings, poison in Halloween candy, toxins in the water, plastic in our bloodstream, creepy lingerers in Golden Gate Park, … | Continue reading
April 2024 It is springtime in Paris. I am in Paris. I know now that this, what I am experiencing, is the perfect combination of a time and a place, a season and a city. It rains a lot, but only a little. The sun is chilly but the wind is warm. At lunchtime, I […] | Continue reading
It’s no secret I love historical mysteries. I spent my childhood reading Nancy Drew, The Famous Five and Secret Seven, progressing to Agatha Christie in my teenage and adult years. I rejoiced when the genre moved away from bumbling women who solved mysteries purely by luck to str … | Continue reading
I love writers who mix genres. It’s like an athlete who plays sports and somehow, improbably, manages to be good at all of them. C.J. Tudor’s novels cross boundaries between mystery, horror, and thriller, managing to bring out the best in each of them while creating something who … | Continue reading
Perched on a stool at the end of the bar of the Elks Club lodge 656, Gary Webb answered his black Nokia flip phone like a celebrity fielding live calls at a telethon fundraiser. After so many decades as a farmer, political agitator, activist, competitive fisherman, football coach … | Continue reading
In the two years that have passed since I did my first round-up of Australian crime and mystery dramas, our “Golden Age” of Antipodean streaming options has only grown more gilded. To date, at least two dozen more top-tier Aussie (and Kiwi) series have made their way to North Ame … | Continue reading
This is part two of our annual roundtable discussion ahead of the Edgar Awards, in which we discuss major issues (and minor peeves) in crime writing. Thanks so much to all the nominees who contributed to the discussion! __________________________________ What do you think is the … | Continue reading
Death of an Author is a rare example of a novel by E. C. R. Lorac (the principal pen name of Carol Rivett) that does not feature her popular and long-serving series detective Inspector Macdonald. The story is so entertaining, however, that we don’t miss him, especially given that … | Continue reading
From ancient times, India has had a rich tradition of magic, active and thriving even today. Lord Indra, Hindu God of the heavens, who wields the power to control thunder and lightning, is also believed to be the world’s first master magician. His biggest magical creation is the … | Continue reading
They fanned out across the slope, taking their time to survey the terrain. The wind was no longer so ferocious, but it was still cold and gusty. Back home, the experts referred to this as a natural ‘terrace’, but it was far from flat – a thirty-degree slope with steep cliffs at t … | Continue reading
Once again, the Edgar Awards are upon us, and once again, I’ve had the privilege of asking dozens of great writers to contribute to our annual roundtable discussion on the state of the genre. This year’s roundtable, like in previous years, is divided into two parts: the first, ru … | Continue reading
Write what you know, they say. A tall order if you’re writing about a serial killer. Most serial killers don’t take the time to sit down and write crime fiction—harder to plot a crime than simply do it, I would think, particularly once you’ve figured it out and are on a roll—but … | Continue reading
There was no good reason for Bob Ramsey, a veteran St. Louis defense attorney, to take on Mark Woodworth as a client. At first glance, Woodworth couldn’t appear more guilty. He’d already been convicted, not once but twice, of the same murder—once in 1995, and then again in 1999 a … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Kellye Garrett, Missing White Woman (Mulholland) “Juicy but shrewd, Missing White Woman is arguably a thriller for the TikTok age, its issues contemporary yet timeless. Kellye Garrett uses her staccat … | Continue reading
They moved Route 36 in the years after the killings. Now the road runs straight where it used to dogleg through Newton County, an hour’s drive southeast of Atlanta, and most travelers don’t see that it was ever otherwise. Orphaned stretches of the old highway linger here and ther … | Continue reading
“People should be interested in books, not their authors.”—Agatha Christie A couple of years ago, on the sun-drenched Amalfi Coast when it was climate-change hot outside, I had a thought (Okay, I had many thoughts, but mostly—why did I think it was a good idea to go to Italy in J … | Continue reading
My cat has nothing in common with Maisie Dobbs. Let me back up. Picture the scene: it’s December 2021. My first nephew had just been born, and because of the pandemic, I couldn’t meet him in person or help my sister the way she’d helped me after my sons were born. I was feeling h … | Continue reading
This is a transcript of a talk that was given, by Dr. Olivia Rutigliano, at New York University Law School’s Poe Room Event, on May 19th, 2023. Briefly, from 1845-1846, Edgar Allan Poe lived in a building on the site where NYU Law’s Furman Hall now stands. The Poe Room Event is a … | Continue reading
A look at the month’s best new releases in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers, via Bookmarks. * Don Winslow, City in Ruins (William Morrow) “Winslow has written a near-perfect saga: He’s created great characters who grow and develop while remaining true to their essence, and a … | Continue reading
My theory is that everyone has one of these stories. Perhaps it was a place you grew up in where random objects would vanish – you swore you put your keys on the sideboard and now there’s just a blank space where they were. Maybe your girlfriend lived in a house that produced une … | Continue reading
Would the real Australia please stand up? Are you a tropical paradise of blue skies and golden beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, koalas and kangaroos? Or are you the perilous continent of venomous snakes and enormous spiders, dense bushland and parched desert where travellers vent … | Continue reading
Recently, Paul Giamatti received an Oscar nomination for his performance in The Holdovers—Alexander Payne’s period film about three loners stuck at a boys’ boarding school during holiday break. He was previously nominated for a supporting role in Cinderella Man in 2005. Many, inc … | Continue reading
For three months after its launch in May 2023, I.S. Berry’s spy novel was flying under the radar, as most debut novels do. Then a rave review from The New Yorker set off a firestorm of other favorable notices that resulted in numerous publications and National Public Radio naming … | Continue reading
During my career as an investigative reporter – and as the wife of an expert in the field of computer-assisted investigative reporting – I have experienced situations that could be distressing if you didn’t realize this is all great material for writing mysteries! The first occur … | Continue reading